


Labyrinthine

by Yatzuaka



Category: Labyrinth (1986), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU, F/M, It's about to get WEIRD up in here, The swears
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2018-12-13 11:58:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11759385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yatzuaka/pseuds/Yatzuaka
Summary: Darcy Lewis is trying to get her shit together, trying to get that elusive last credit to graduate, while balancing her duties to Jane.Everything changes (even the discontent she strangles inside) when Loki's latest prank pulls her out of reality.At least, she thinks it's a prank.Isn't it?





	1. The First Day of the Rest of Her Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Whyndancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whyndancer/gifts).



> So. I tried to write this birthday gift fic for Whyndancer (it's so, so late), because I too love the movie this AU is based off. Shit got considerably weirder than I expected. (Although considering the source, maybe I should have known how surreal and absurd I would make it?)
> 
> (In short, I am blaming David Bowie and his ridiculous tights for everything that occurs herein.)
> 
> Anyway, nothing says I adore you like a dozen or so thousand words of strange, am I right?

Darcy Lewis was making a total jack-ass of herself in Central Park. At a different time in her life, she might have cared, but she'd just turned 31, and her supply of fucks was running dangerously low.

In the nine years since the frankly life-altering events of Puente Antiguo, her already nebulous plans for the future had, well, gone down the shitter. She'd only had six credits to go before being an official college graduate (which by the measuring stick she'd grown up with, qualified a person as a real, fully functional, _adult_ member of society), but somehow she'd never found the time to actually finish them up.

In her own defense, it was hard to find time to study and go to class between saving the world and making sure Jane ate something that wasn't made entirely of chemicals.

Which brings us back around to making a jack-ass of herself. Turning thirty last year had been something of a wake-up call, especially since her mom had ended up in the hospital. Taking it as a sign, she'd enrolled back into college and was now one single solitary credit shy of finally being done with her illustrious college career. All that remained was to give one final presentation for that group of freakazoids in her class and the crazy old coot with tenure who was her professor. A presentation she would really prefer to ace, even if she'd sort of taken the class as a kind of a throw away. (She should have learned her lesson from Home Ec in high school that there was no such thing in the educational system.) Norse Mythology 101. Because how hard could it be when she basically lived with it? Turned out, it was pretty damned hard. 

Hubris would absolutely be the end of her.

So here Darcy was, seated in the shade of a majestic elm on this fine spring day with JARVIS critiquing her performance. There were undoubtedly better methods of practice, but public humiliation tended to sear the most minute of details into her brain, so it was particularly effective. Also, if she'd been forced, yet again, to skip out on being able to enjoy a single, measly hour of yet another beautiful spring day, she might've actually started screaming and never stopped, so there was that, too.

She'd done ok so far, the words came quickly and correctly until she got to the bits about Loki. Darcy hadn't been a fan to begin with, and living in his general vicinity hasn't worked a miracle and endeared him to her. He was a self-centered jerk in real life (albeit a handsome one with a wicked sense of humor when he forgot about the stick in his ass), and he came across as ten times worse in mythology. Which was all (or mostly) fake, she _realized_ that, but she was ready to believe nearly anything about him, especially since the whole prank war she'd accidentally started.

(His was the face she had increasingly seen in her head in those lonely, dark hours at night, when her fingers crept furtively up her thighs, though it shamed her enough that she would never, could never admit it.)

She waved a bee away from her face again, trying not to hurt it, but not interested in being stung, either.

Perhaps it was a combination of the insistently curious bee and the alarms sounding from her watch, tablet and phone that completely distracted her from her surroundings.

Darcy realized she was late dropping off the time-sensitive science sample for Jane, the errand she'd been sent on in the first place, and there was a moment where she regretted how entwined her life was with Jane's. She came within spitting distance of resenting that _Jane's_ work was so all-important. It was drowned out quickly, that horrible miasma of impotent jealousy, with an inescapable feeling of impending doom. The panic was lightning quick, firing bolts down her neurons; _shitshitshit she's nowhere near prepared - she's going to flunk - she's never actually going to graduate - she's never going to progress - it's going to rain - that sound - what is that awful sou -_

The blinding pain in her head disoriented her. Though she didn't smell burnt toast, she was certain that she'd had a stroke, but that diagnosis could have been her hypochondria rearing its head. Something wet trickled down her face.

The spring afternoon, once so bright, dimmed even further, or maybe it was just her? The ground accelerated alarmingly towards her -

 _Whoa_.

The grass was far more prickly under her cheek than it had been under her palms earlier. The pain faded, along with the daylight, the pounding in her chest slowing, slowing, and suddenly all Darcy felt was _miffed_.

She'd honestly thought her death would have been a touch more dramatic.

* * *

A set of fingers snapped in her face.

Startled, she automatically took a step back, stumbling a little, and her ankle rolled, crunchy, under her own weight. Darcy kept herself upright by sheer force of will, teeth gritted with determination and did not wince. She was not going to show weakness, not now, not ever, and certainly not in front of _this guy_.

This guy, of course being the immaculate, sentient goatee, Tony Stark, who looked annoyed while literally tapping his foot. "Well, do you?"

Darcy had no idea how she got here, much less what he'd asked her, but she was not about to tell him that. "Of course," she scoffed.

"It's your ass if this doesn't work," Tony scolded as she made a tentative move forward.

Pain shot through her ankle, but she did not wobble. Darcy gripped the strap of her backpack, knuckles white, and walked sedately down the hallway, as if she had not a care in the world. Tony's voice buzzed around her, as if to ensure that she knew he was there. That was what he did. _Talktalktalk_. She ignored him to the best of her ability, just let the flow of his words wash over her, since it was all she could manage to get to the lab without collapsing into a blubbering heap.

She'd been _dead_ , or some weird dream approximation, less than five minutes ago, and she wasn't sure how she'd ended up here, but it was possible she was in actual, literal Hell.

Darcy did not slam the door in Tony Stark's face. The door was an automatic, hydraulically powered piece of state of the art equipment. To have slammed it was an impossibility. It was, however, possible that her hip might have bumped the manual lock button, but who's to say exactly?

She turned and pretended that she hadn't noticed that Iron Man himself was locked on the other side of a bulletproof glass door for at least five minutes.

The lab was not in total chaos. More like a mild pandemonium. And this was why Jane needed her, to keep the crazy contained, to keep the lab running, to smooth out the kinks. (To feed and water her, like a particularly picky and mobile plant). Darcy trundled through the tangled wires and metal bobs and bits, nearly falling on her ass at least four times. All the while her ankle throbbed in time with her pulse, increasingly frantic. Darcy only needed to drop off the godforsaken backpack -

Was that her Norse Mythology textbook?

Fucking goddamnit, she'd looked all over for it, and there it was serving as a prop to hold up a - was that a freaking laser?

And sure, JARVIS had downloaded a copy of her heretofore missing textbook to her StarkTab, but she liked _books_. Real books. With paper and ink. She liked the squeak of a highlighter across a sentence, the way her hand cramped from making itty-bitty little notes in the margins, using post-it notes as bookmarks. Sue her.

As she looked around for the person who was both her boss and her best friend, Darcy tried to remember that latter fact.

_Best._

_Friend._

Who was currently on fire. Granted, it was limited to a gentle smoldering on the cuffs of her overlong sleeves, carelessly hanging over her fireproof welding gloves, but the fact remained: Jane was on fire.

Did Darcy have to do _everything_ around here?

As she turned to grab one of the many, conveniently placed fire extinguishers, she got a face full of fire retardant foam. Wiping her face off, she saw DUM-E whirring in a circle as it's gears whined. The bot waved a fire extinguisher in what could only a gesture of victory, and Darcy wondered absently exactly how much trouble she'd get into if she did some 'tinkering' of her own.

Enough of the foam hit Jane to smother the proto-flames, as well as to alert the scientist to the presence of another human being. As Jane smiled at Darcy, the level of annoyance Darcy felt skyrocketed; her eye twitched, her pulse raced, her hands clenched. She shoved it down, boxed it up, because it was pointless to feel so aggravated. It wasn't even Jane's fault, her circumstances. Darcy _chose_ this. Darcy was normally, if not happy, then content with this.

She held the backpack out by the left strap, watched as Jane's eyes lit up, watched and knew the precise second when everything else fell away for Jane. Darcy should have probably told her boss to eat, to have some water at the very least, but she didn't. It had only been a few hours since the last poptart, and insisting would be a pointless affair at this juncture.

There was a swoosh as the door opened, and Darcy made herself small, unobtrusive. It was honestly not hard to not be noticed by Tony and Jane. Not when there was a spiffy new science toy to play with. Darcy wished fervently that she was elsewhere, anywhere else, with anybody else. She would even voluntarily go to the other side of the lab, if only so she could escape from the Jane and Tony show for, like, five minutes. Maybe even ten. She needed to figure out what was wrong with her head.

It occurred to her:

It had to be Loki.

How hadn't she figured it out before?

It hadn't been an elaborate daydream. It wasn't a psychotic break. Loki was fucking with her. Had to be.

She looked across the lab, to the section that was so clearly his, it might as well have been demarcated with a green velvet rope.

It was Darcy's bad luck that he was looking at their side of the lab at that precise moment.

Their eyes met.

 _Look away_ , the flight response in her head pipes up helpfully.

 _LOOK AWAY_ , the flight response screamed when she didn't.

The so-familiar mess of the lab fell away.

She was in her room? Only, it can't be her room. It _can't_. Her mom had moved three years ago, to a smaller apartment in a better neighborhood. A nice couple from Korea lived there now, with their adorable little boy. It's not possible, but the walls are that familiar splotchy lavender, an accident from back when she'd outgrown the pink and wanted blue. That was her bed, that narrow bunk above her desk. It was as messy as she remembered, strewn with papers and multicolored pens and text books. 

Her fingers itched to trace the cracked spines of the tidy rows of paperbacks lining the shelves. Even her posters were up -

Loki's face in a variety of permutations and expressions have replaced the faces of her teenaged selves idols. She could admit, if only to herself, that Loki looked just as alluring in a cream silk cone bra as Madonna had back in the day.

_What do you want?_

His voice was in her head, and she wanted to rage. She wanted to rip everything in this horrible nightmare of bone-deep familiarity to shreds, but she couldn't. Her limbs were as heavy and useless as if they've been encased in concrete. She couldn't even look down at herself.

_Do you want a different life?_

It's not real. It's no more real then the park.

It was not real.

_Do you want a life without Jane?_

There was a part of her that wanted that more than anything.

There was a part of her that recoiled from the very thought.

Loki was there, as suddenly as if he'd always been there, and she had just been too stupid to notice earlier.

He smiled, so beautiful, so dreadful, it made her organs and bones itch under her skin.

Jane sat at his feet, fiddling with a strangely liquid, completely improbable 32-sided Rubiks icosidodecahedron (a word that burbled forth from deep within her subconscious). Darcy couldn't see Jane's face through the curtain of her friend's shiny, honey colored hair, but she knew what she'd see there anyway - rapturous concentration. Loki reached down negligently, rubbing a curl of Jane's hair through long, thin fingers. Jane didn't seem to notice, as her fingers flicked and turned the toy in her hand over and over again, colors Darcy didn't know the name of changing too fast for her eyes to track.

_Well?_

His voice was still in her head, though his mouth remained frozen in that terrible parody of a grin.

_I can give you an opportunity to get her back, if that's truly what you want._

Loki withdrew his hand from Jane's hair, smelling his fingertips with a gesture that set Darcy's gut churning. He snapped, and her best friend was gone.

Darcy was not prepared for the surge of emotion inside. It pressed up against her skin, against the invisible hold on her body, and she _can_ , she _will_ get Jane back, she simply needed to -

MOVE!

His laughter in her ears was infectious in his delight, rich with amusement. Her fingers were around his throat, squeezing with every single bit of strength she could muster. (She remembered the years of playing instruments like the clarinet and piano, the long nights pounding at her laptops keyboard, glorying in her superiority over the piss-ants who challenged her online, she remembered the stress-ball she squeezed over and over and over -)

He slipped away like sand spilling through her clenching fists, and still he smiled.

_You might actually make it through this._

He sounded bemused. Her hands flexed convulsively on empty air.

_But let's keep it interesting, shall we?_

She whipped around, looking for him.

_I can afford to be generous, though. You're only mortal, after all._

Darcy swallowed and rubbed her hand down her face, the absence of her glasses startling. She hadn't worn contacts in years; they made her eyes watery -

_You have thirteen hours, Darcy Lewis._

She wanted to say, _For what?,_ but her voice was still uncooperative, lodged in her trachea like a stone, and all the happened was that her mouth shaped the words without sound.

His breath tickled her ear, "Why, to get to the center of the Labyrinth, of course."


	2. Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin Eater

Either Darcy was getting used to these sudden changes in her environment, or she's freaking out about it less. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, really, but the point was that when she found herself back in Central Park, all she did was sort of shrug and try to get her bearings. 

As she inspected her surroundings, it became more and more clear that however much it looked _and_ smelled like Central Park, it was not, in fact, Central Park. Like as not, she was probably not even in New York.

It was a good facsimile, though. She could almost give him that.

However, as she gazed at the trees that ringed the pavilion, eerie faces peered at her from the bark. They were something of an indicator that all was Not Right. One of the trees winked at her. Another licked it lips lasciviously. Disconcerted, Darcy looked away. It occurred to her as she glanced down, that perhaps she was exactly where she was needed to be.

The twisting curves of the remnant of the Einstein-Rosenberg bridge that had taken Thor and a chained Loki back to Asgard all those years ago were as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. She recognized it from the desert near Puente Antiguo, from the pictures Jane had studied obsessively when they'd finally been returned by the same aggressively beige agent from SHIELD who took them in the first place.

She studied the image, tried to figure out if it meant something, if there was any chance that Loki had given up such a huge clue, if she could memorize a route. There were none she could see that would lead to the middle. She tried to trace several paths, but found that the image twisted and bent the more she looked at it.

Sour enough to make her lips purse, she thought emphatically, _Cheater_!

The faint sound of his laughter drifted softly on the breeze, and Darcy froze.

It was entirely possible she was totally and thoroughly fucked, but she would not let that stop her.

Turning in a circle, she tried to find a break in the trees surrounding the empty pavilion, but all she succeeded in doing was making herself dizzy. She'd have to hike through the dense shrubbery. Somehow. Had she known she'd be roughing it at some point during the day when she'd gotten dressed that morning, she would have worn more substantial clothing. Possibly hiking boots. Which was a completely inane observation to make when faced with a potentially deadly, possibly sentient forest.

If there was no easy way through, she might as well go the most direct route. The only problem with that was that she had no idea where the center of the labyrinth would be.

The answer occurred to her after a second of contemplations that went something like:

_-If I was the center of the labyrinth, where would I be?_

_-If I were a sociopathic megalomaniac with a penchant for power displays, what would I consider the ultimate power display?_

_-If I was a magical super villain intent on terrorizing a lowly lab associate for no discernable reason, what place could I occupy that would be extremely fucked up, yet obvious?_

The Tower.

It was the most obvious choice.

She strained to see the embarrassingly penile outline of her erstwhile home/workplace over the treeline, but it was nowhere to be found.

As she set off towards the west (God she hoped it was west, or whatever passed for west in this nightmare) side of the pavilion, a lump she hadn't previously noticed on one of the benches shifted in size and shape, resolving itself from a pile of leaves and paper into a vaguely human-shaped form. An arm swept up and a mess of dried foliage fell away from where the head would be, revealing a face.

Darcy knew that face, she knew that tip-tilted nose, and those pursed, button lips. She knew, but could not put her finger on why precisely that was.

The woman-thing was too small. She couldn't be more than four feet tall. Her hands were dainty, tiny to the point ridiculousness. Darcy had to stifle the feeling of being gargantuan and able to crush this sprite of a person with her mere presence. When one of those ludicrously miniature hands reached out in what could only be an invitation to shake, Darcy gingerly, carefully took the proffered hand and gently moved their clasped appendages up and down.

"Darcy Lewis," she introduced herself, because it seemed like the polite thing to do.

The strange woman smiled, her voice soft and husky, in a deeper register than expected, "I am the Roaming Off. You are new here, Нет (nyet - no)?"

The tickle of recognition was like a sneeze stuck in the back of her sinuses. When it became clear that the ... _Roaming Off_ expected an answer, Darcy gave a little nod.

"Then I will show you the way into the лабиринт (labirint - labyrinth)."

Darcy snapped to attention at the garbled word at the end - "You know how to get into the labyrinth?"

The giggle set her teeth on edge; it was high pitched, unnatural, grating, a stark contrast to the smooth contralto of her speaking voice. "да (Da - yes), of course, Lyuda. I am the Roaming Off. I know too much and not enough and everything in between. Come. сюда (Syuda - this way)."

With alternatives thin on the ground, Darcy followed the tiny beckoning woman. As they approached the thick stand of trees, Darcy expected - well, she isn't sure exactly what she had expected, but it wasn't that the trees would use their branches to lift the bottom of their trunks like a skirt and step out of the way as gracefully as if they were dancers.

It took a second to register that the Roaming Off was singing, and that the trees moved in time to her rhythm.

The sun disappeared as Darcy followed the diminutive woman through the newly cleared path, the thick curtain of leaves whispering quietly in perfect counterpoint overhead. There was a smell, something earthy and deep enveloping her, and her steps became less and less sure the farther they went from the paved, open space of the pavilion. Her mind became soft, with loose thoughts ricocheting harmlessly around, and she didn't see why she should have to catch a single one.

It was _nice_ in here. She could just take off her shoes, her socks and dig her toes into the sweet smelling ground, she could relax that way, she could put down roots and never, ever leave...

"Uh, uh, uh."

She was pulled along -  _syuda syuda -_ and Darcy did not want to go. Even if there was a sense of something unfulfilled, a task she _must complete_ , she wanted to stay, she wanted a chance to sprout.

A ray of sun shone bright as a diamond through a small break in the canopy above, and as she stood there in its warmth, the foreignness of her own thoughts suddenly occurred to her.

_No, she did not want to stay._

She most certainly wanted to go, as quickly as possible. But how?

The Roaming Off didn't need height to look directly into Darcy's soul, "Remember who you came for. Hold on to it. Hold on to me."

 _Jane_.

She had to get to _Jane_.

There was surprising strength in the small fingers wrapped around hers. She let it lead her, pull and tug her, she let the voice she nearly remembered bully and prod her.

_Jane._

_Jane._

_It's for Jane._

And then it was over, abruptly and without warning.

Darcy curled over on herself, holding her suddenly protesting stomach and vomited. The sunshine did nothing but highlight the thin puddle of yellow bile that had splatted on the sidewalk.

"What was that?" she gasped, wiping drool from her chin, as she looked around for the Roaming Off. She couldn't find it in herself to be embarrassed. "Roaming Off?"

The sidewalk stretched on infinitely in either direction, an uninterrupted wall of windows shining like mirrors across the street. There was no sign of the person responsible for getting her this far, and Darcy Lewis ruthlessly held in the fear that threatened to overwhelm her.

"She's gone," a tinny voice bleated, barely audible, as if from a bad set of ear buds a great distance.

A bead of sweat trickled down her neck.

"She's gone, and you're all alone."

It was in her head, she was certain, that voice. She ignored it, easily, because it was not the weirdest thing that has happened to her today. Darcy started walking, choosing to go right.

"Oi, you there! Don't ignore me! You wouldn't like me when I'm mad!"

The voice sounded so far off, so small, it was hard to take seriously. She kept on striding purposefully, "You're not real. I'm not crazy, but you're not real. Loki, you're going to have to do better than that."

Her toes crunched painfully against something hard, immovable. It was all Darcy could do not to howl in agony, her ankle twinging in memory. She found herself on her back, staring at the unreal blue of the sky - there was not one, not two, but three moons bright and diffuse white, hanging up there as if they were just out of reach.

"I assure you, missy, I am most certainly real. Real as you are enormous. To your left."

Darcy twisted her neck, unconcerned about the way her hair caught on the rough texture of the asphalt. There was a worm there, reared up on its hind legs. It was green like a Granny Smith apple, and it had a human face, a tiny perfect face that looked at her like she was dirt beneath it's miniscule feet.

She had the good sense to scream. She didn't stop immediately, either.

In her defense, it's been a very shitty day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took so long to get this to where I didn't hate it, holy moly. 
> 
> Thanks for your patience and I hope you enjoyed it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
